Pray That She Remains
by OverlyDramatic
Summary: What do you do when the song ends? Pray that she remains proud and strong and so hopelessly hopeful.


Well, this is a pseudo canon compliant, post-series fic that I'm really quite surprised I was inspired to write, as angst is not generally my forte. If you like sunshine and rainbows and hockey cotillions, you may want to click away.

**Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters, nor the setting. Only the angst.**

**xXxXx**

Jaime did not realize he was frowning at the Iron Throne until she caught him, humming a faint greeting that lost itself in the cavernous domed ceiling almost before leaving her mouth. She did not accuse him—would never, he was sure, though he deserved accusations and far worse—but neither could she come without warning him of her presence.

For that he was grateful.

He turned, as though a lack of sight would ease Aegon's ever-present reminder of war and duty, inescapable regrets and impossible dreams.

There was Brienne, looking well in a blue tunic of silk brocade. The hue succeeded in its task of emphasizing her eyes—the evocative sapphire eyes Jaime could not help but dream about.

She rarely wore her house colors, and he could not help but be glad of it.

_The sight of it would turn my stomach._ He knew that well enough.

"My Lady Lannister," Jaime greeted, inclining his head.

His hand was stiff on his sword hilt—the sword that was ceremonial more than anything, despite his improvement in the practice yard. He could give most knights a contest, now.

Most knights, but not her. He knew that without once chancing on an opportunity to prove it.

"Jaime," Brienne swallowed, pressing her lips and correcting, "Ser."

At her neck, below the faint white hanging scar, rested a single sapphire on a gold chain. He had gifted it to her, a maiden's token for her wedding, but he had not seen her wear it.

Jaime chose not to comment.

"You have done well about the Red Keep, I see," he observed, taking in her stance, more confident than he had seen since their time together beneath the Mountains of the Moon.

"No one has seen fit to relieve you of your sword," he added wryly, ignoring the sharp twist he felt upon glimpsing the lion-hilt of her blade, "though I suspect it is the greatest threat in the Crownlands to the new royal family."

Brienne flared, ineptness courtesies forgotten.

"I would never harm the Queen."

"I am glad of it," steel undercut his words, and a sour taste of not-quite-regret. "As Lord Commander of the Kingsguard—and her father—I should have to have your head. It is not a particularly pleasant head to look upon, and while I suppose putting it on a spike above the battlements might scare away our foes, I admit I prefer it atop your shoulders."

Those shoulders stiffened, hunched, sank upon themselves.

Jaime cursed himself for snatching away her _lion's pride_.

"Forgive me, my Lady," he muttered, fingers tightening reflexively on his sword hilt. "I am more bitter than I have a right to be."

Her eyes grew melancholy. The loneliness in them seemed rich and impregnable.

"Many of us regret the things we should extol," she whispered, and suddenly she was not the Lady of Casterly Rock, but Brienne again. "Myrcella could not ask for a better protector."

"She has asked," Jaime noted, unsettled by the frank sincerity of her gaze. "No one has seen fit to grant her request, for all that she is Queen of the Realm."

He smiled and tried to infuse his words with the amused indifference that once came as easily to him as breathing.

"The loss of a hand is not nearly so debilitating as old age, as it turns out. I'm sure Barristan Selmy would be glad of it, had I not fed the flowers with his corpse."

The depth of knowledge in her gaze rent his heart.

"He should not have underestimated you." She would not allow him self-pity, not for this, "He should not have sought to harm her."

"The bastard queen," he murmured, glancing back to take in the sharp, twisted wreckage of a throne.

The white cloak lay heavy upon his shoulders. Heavier than his armor, by far.

Brienne came up beside him, and the press of her shoulder lent strength to his conviction.

"No, he should not."

Silence enveloped them, comforting and suffocating. In the immensity of the hall, it suddenly seemed that there was him and there was her, and nothing beyond the stones beneath their feet.

He could not have said how long they stood there, breathing in tandem as the sun cast monstrous shadows along the bright, mangled iron blades of the throne. It could have been minutes or hours; half the day, perhaps. Jaime would not have moved for all the gold in the Seven Kingdoms.

For once it was not him that broke the stillness, but her.

"'The Lord of Casterly Rock wants you for his wife,' my father said," Brienne's voice was rough, hardly more than wind whispering through jagged rocks.

Jaime clung to the sound of it breaking.

"I did not think but that it was you."

"Would that it was," he should not have said.

He could not seem to help himself.

She reached down and grasped his hand under the pristine white cloak. Their fingers tangled together, and she clutched at him until his good hand bent and ached. He did nothing more than savor the dull, painful closeness of her.

"Jaime," she choked, and he almost repeated her name back, but then he would have kissed her, and that path could only end in folly.

So he clutched her hand tighter, and pushed away the temptation to look upon her face.

Footsteps echoed in the hall, as they had not when Brienne had come.

Jaime and Brienne pivoted as one, fingers catching as they tore asunder. Tense and silent, they watched Tyrion study them for the endless length of his approach.

"My wife dwarfs even you, brother," Tyrion japed lightly, looking up at them with shrewd awareness.

Jaime wondered that he did not find satisfaction in those mismatched eyes, only misery.

"It is a great pleasure to find," continued the Lord of the Rock archly. "I do not feel so stunted beside her."

"If father could see us now," Jaime retorted coolly, nodding to take his leave.

He could feel their eyes upon him—blue and green and black—as he strode away so quickly his white cloak swirled up and seemed to swallow them.

The words were almost lost behind the heavy weight of the postern door, but Jaime caught them, faint and alive in his ear.

"My wife practices in the western courtyard at noon. See that you don't bruise her too badly on the morrow."

**XxXxX**

Er, yes. There you are. Sorry about that.

Comments, please? Can I even ask that at this point? Well here I go anyway: _feeeeedbaaacck._ Really.


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